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0:06Skip to 0 minutes and 6 secondsWelcome to week 6 of Creative Coding. We've reached the final week of the course, so congratulations on making it this far. We hope that you've found the material stimulating and that its got you asking questions and thinking about creativity and computers more deeply. This final week will be a little different to past weeks. We're going to present some more advanced topics to give you a better sense of why people work creatively with code and the ideas that inspire them. These topics are advanced in terms of the coding skills that are required to create the works we'll be discussing, but equally as important are the principles by which they operate and the questions they raise.

0:48Skip to 0 minutes and 48 secondsAs we'll see many of these ideas come from the sciences, such as biology. But they are not scientific experiments or simulations of real phenomena, they're 'something else' and understanding what this something else is will be important in understanding their significance to creativity and creative practice.

1:09Skip to 1 minute and 9 secondsWe've also got a larger programming challenge for you: to create a dynamic, generative postcard using Processing. Your postcard should combine several of the different media we've been working with over the course, including graphic shapes, images, text or sound. You'll need to think about the rules that you use to make your postcard so that the elements change over time. If you like, you can make the postcard interactive, responding to mouse or keyboard events. You should also try to design your sketch so that each time its run, it changes. This could be in response to the time of day, seasons, weather or just through careful use of randomness.

1:52Skip to 1 minute and 52 secondsWe've deliberately made the project open-ended, so how much time you spend on it is up to you. But remember, learning to program well is hard work, just like trying to learn a new language. You start with some basic words and simple phrases, but becoming fluent takes lots of time and practice. It's the same with coding. So if you're having difficulty, don't worry, that's normal. Be persistent and be curious. Take the code we've provided you with, play, experiment and create. Use the discussions to ask questions and to explain solutions you've found. Please share your finished creations, or work-in-progress sketches with others doing the course, so well have a fantastic on-line exhibition of your work to celebrate your achievements.

Introduction to Week 6

Watch Jon McCormack introduce week 6 and provide an overview of the themes to be covered in the final week of the course.

If you have completed the previous five weeks of the course, congratulations on making it this far!

The format this week is different from previous weeks. Our focus will be on some selected ideas that drive creative coding and generative art. Many of these ideas come from other disciplines, such as the Biological sciences, or prior artistic practices.

We also want you to develop a final sketch for this course, a ‘generative postcard’ and share it with other learners doing the course.

Learning outcomes for week 6

At the end of this week you should be able to:

Appreciate some of the basic ideas behind processes used in generative art, such as feedback, aesthetic selection and evolution;

Describe and explore art and design made using evolutionary algorithms;

Articulate your ideas and thoughts on some broader cultural issues concerning artificial life.